About Dirt Alley Design

Inspired by the beauty of street grids and her travels to cities around the world, artist Michelle Chandra invented maze maps in which she transforms street grids into mazes. Each maze map is designed by hand using a city’s street grid data. Our maze art isn't just decorative art for your home, it's a real puzzle maze you can solve (if you dare!)

Our handmade screen prints are made entirely in the USA using paper from French Paper Co and non-toxic inks.

Dirt Alley Design's mission is to create interesting and unique map decor that you can find no where else!

How Michelle Makes a City Maze Map

There is a lot of time, and thought that goes into a Dirt Alley Design Maze print. (No joke, each maze print can take upwards of 50-80 hours to design!)

First, Michelle chooses a city and downloads the city street data

Michelle draws the puzzle maze on top of the street data (removing streets to make the maze less complex!) and tests the maze is challenging to solve with friends and family

Michelle screen prints each maze print by hand using a home-made vacuum screenprinting press built by Michelle's dad, Umesh

A Little Bit About Our Founder

Michelle Chandra studied programming, data art and cartography at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program where she earned her Master's degree (that's a fancy way of saying she's got the know-how to make cool map art).

For her Master's Thesis, she created an interactive map visualization that let you see sunrises and sunsets around the world on Instagram in real-time! Her graduate work has been featured in many publications including the Daily Mail, theWashington Post, Engadget, Gizmodo,theCreator’s Project and the Weather Channel.